While North Korea under command of Kim Jong Un still has not completely denuclearized, it appears they are working the government of the South in earnest to lessen hostilities, and as the Atlantic article points out, in hopes of alleviating global sanctions to stimulate their economy.

"We're getting along very well".

"I think we're going to do one, fairly, into January, February", Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he returned late Saturday from the Group of 20 summit in Argentina.

The White House said in a statement on Saturday after Trump's meeting with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, that they and Kim would strive "to see a nuclear free Korean Peninsula".

For the first time in more than a decade, a train has travelled from South Korea across the heavily guarded border into North Korea.

In November the vice-president, Mike Pence, said Trump would push for a concrete plan outlining Pyongyang's moves to end its arms programmes.

Sanders said both leaders agreed on the necessity for "maintaining vigorous enforcement of existing sanctions to ensure the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) understands that denuclearization is the only path".

U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un walk together before their working lunch during their summit at the Capella Hotel on the resort island of Sentosa, Singapore June 12, 2018.

The last defection involving North Koreans occurred in May when two civilians aboard a small boat defected to the South across the Yellow Sea. "We have a good relationship", Trump said of Kim, according to the report.

At the U.N. General Assembly in NY that year, for example, Trump said the USA would "totally destroy" North Korea if it continued with its provocative actions.

The two leaders said Kim's visit to the South Korean capital "would provide additional momentum to their joint efforts to establish peace on the Korean peninsula", Moon's press secretary Yoon Young-chan said. "It is North Korea which should clearly state and show by taking actions, then I am sure that there will be no reason why the Security Council of the United Nations will continue to impose the sanction on North Korea".

However, after hosting their third summit meeting with Moon in Pyongyang in September, Kim has agreed to visit Seoul.